Time to Pay the Piper

Notification for the new management fees arrived today. Actually it arrived yesterday, but I avoided opening it until today as I was in a good mood. I wanted to stay that way.

As expected the letter was a poke in the eye. The old management fee was £57, 000 based on 12.5 percent of services provided.

The new management fee will be £239, 730.This equates to a management overhead of over 52 percent, a truly remarkable figure.

No information is given on how the figures have been arrived at. Just a breakdown of where costs have occurred.

The letter seems full of spin. For example in the section entitled “Comments and observations received from leasholders,” is the comment:

I don’t see any justification to this proposed increase and do not agree with it.

Has the answer

In accordance with the terms of your lease, Stevenage Borough Council is entitled to recover its costs for service provided.

A classic straw man argument.

The actual questions most people will be asking are:

I think this is too high, can you justify it?

What can I do if I still disagree?

No answers to these questions.

Hits to this site are the highest recorded, many coming from Google to the Leaseholders Forums post. Comments have been left discussing what to do.

I have decided to set up an online forum so people looking for information or just wanting to vent can have their say. Maybe it will become a place to organize a response.

We still have the major works to pay for.

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